Natural Building, hobbit home construction

Join us for the last of our Swedish practicum intensives building a beautiful, affordable and human scale home at the beautiful Karlberg community less than 1 hr from Stockholm...

What can I expect from the course?

This
practicum will be primarily hands on, making quick decisions and creatively
collaborating to make a multi- functional building that will serve as a
washroom, drying room, herb/ mushroom /fruit drying racks as well as a sauna
and radiant heated relaxation space orientated towards the setting sun down the
valley to the West of the property.

We aim
to build roundwood timber framing to support a reciprocal roof that will be
clad and turfed as a living roof. The
walls will be in filled with strawbale and plastered with natural clay and lime
renders. Using bottles and recycled
glazing and other locally sourced materials/ waste we will learn how to design
and build a low cost yet beautiful and functional building within a very short
space of time.

Alongside
daily building tasks we shall begin with theory and classroom time focused on
appropriate building design in this and other climates, as well as any aspects
of Permaculture design the group feel inclined to look into. We have the opportunity to use the evenings
to study other areas of interest related to building, community and
Permaculture, watch films to extend the learning or simply relax together in
the community that we build during our time together.

As this
is primarily a practicum is good to come prepared to use your initiative and
get involved wherever you feel you can contribute. There will be various tasks to carry out
simultaneously as well as quick decisions and problem solving needed. Working together we hope to get the bulk of
this project accomplished leaving people with a clear idea of how to approach
building similar structures and dwellings in their own setting, which could
easily be adapted to creating a home.

Alongside
daily building we shall also be studying natural low impact building design and
other related topics including but not limited to;